Tag Archives: Tom Laskawy

A recent University of Washington study showed Seattle-area shoppers at Whole Foods are much less likely to be obese, on average, than shoppers at the less expensive chain Albertsons.

I shrugged when I read this. From what I can tell, the study didn’t control for income: it’s well established that Whole Foods shoppers have higher incomes, which has always been correlated with low obesity rates. Indeed, some public health experts will tell you that we don’t have an obesity epidemic so much as we have a poverty epidemic.

[This piece by Tom, originally posted over at Grist, was exactly what I was thinking when I read Michael Moss’s article: Salt isn’t the problem; processed food is. But poor Alton! What a mistake. Anyway … – mb]

The biggest loser in Michael Moss’s New York Times exposé of the food industry’s fight against salt restrictions isn’t the food industry. It isn’t government, either. It’s Alton Brown.

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message. Continue reading →

Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity initiative has kicked into high gear. The Presidential Task Force on Childhood Obesity released a landmark report documenting the scale of the problem complete with a list of 70 recommendations and a set of benchmarks, including the goal of returning the childhood obesity rate to its 1972 level of 5% by 2030.

And last week a new industry partnership called the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, which includes most of the major food companies, agreed to reduce the number of calorie in its members products by one and a half trillion calories by 2015. Continue reading →

[Tom Laskawy blogs on food and the environment at Grist.org, Beyond Green, and now here at markbittman.com. IMHO, he’s not only among the best researchers in the field, he’s a voice of (non-dogmatic) reason and a fine writer. His work has appeared in the The New York Times Online, Slate, The New Republic and The American Prospect. – mb]

My considered analysis of food safety in the U.S.? It’s an unmitigated disaster.

Salmonella in peanut butter made by a single manufacturer causes deaths, sickness and the recall of thousands of different products from store shelves. Over ten million pounds of beef have been recalled since President Obama took office. Indeed, the ongoing food safety crisis that is industrial ground beef inspired NYT writer Michael Moss to write a piece that won a Pulitzer.